Personally.
Slowly.
And I'd make absolutely certain they understood exactly why they were dying.
29
ELLA
The door shut with a heavy sound, like the car itself understood this wasn’t a casual trip. The sky split open the second we pulled away from The Sanctuary.
Rain came down hard and sudden, a violent curtain that erased the clean lines of Paris and turned everything into motion and shadow. Water streaked down the glass in restless rivulets, distorting streetlights into molten gold. Thunder rolled low and close.
It felt like the city was reacting.
Or maybe I was just looking for something outside of myself to blame.
I sat back against the leather seat, Rose’s sweater wrapped tight around my body, Kane’s thigh pressed solid against mine. The contact anchored me. If he hadn’t been there, I might have dissolved into the storm.
The driver navigated the slick streets with professional calm, tires slicing through water, engine steady.
Inside the vehicle, it was warm. Controlled.
Inside my chest, nothing was.
Sabine.
The image of her at the kitchen table that morning came back with brutal clarity. The crayon clutched in her small fingers. The way she’d looked up at me, assessing. Curious. The way she’d stepped forward and wrapped her arms around my legs as if she’d already decided I belonged to her.
Five years old.
I had known her for less than a day.
And somehow it felt like I had failed her.
“I should have gone with him,” I said quietly, staring at the rain racing each other down the window. “I should have been there.”
Kane didn’t immediately respond. He was angled slightly toward the glass, posture alert, eyes scanning reflections in passing cars, intersections, side streets. Even in crisis, he was methodical. Evaluating.
“You couldn’t have predicted this,” he said finally.
“That doesn’t make it feel better.”
Thunder cracked overhead, close enough that the vibration hummed through the chassis of the SUV.
I closed my eyes and let the guilt rise.
I had imagined children for myself one day. A future version of my life where there was noise in the kitchen and small shoes by the door and someone who called me Mom.
I had imagined Rose having children first. Of course, she would. She was the stable one. The careful one. The one who planned.
We were supposed to do it together.
I’d pictured cousins growing up in parallel. Holiday chaos. Inside jokes. Summer trips that turned into traditions. Rose and I standing side by side, watching our children become something neither of us had fully been.
Instead, she had done it alone. And I had arrived just in time to lose her daughter.
The thought lodged deep and sharp.
